OECD Guidelines for Multinationals

The Guidelines constitute a set of voluntary recommendations to multinational enterprises in all the major areas of business ethics, including employment and industrial relations, human rights, environment, information disclosure, combating bribery, consumer interests, science and technology, competition, and taxation. The Guidelines are complemented by commentaries which provide information on and explanation of the Guidelines text and implementation procedures. Finally, clarifications provide interpretations of how certain provisions of the Guidelines should be understood.
Adhering governments have committed to promote them among multinational enterprises operating in or from their territories. Adhering countries comprise all 30 OECD member countries, and eleven non-member countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, Estonia, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Peru, Romania and Slovenia).
The instrument’s distinctive implementation mechanisms include the operations of National Contact Points (NCP), which are government offices charged with promoting the Guidelines and handling enquiries in the national context. The NCP ensure that the guidelines are well known and understood by the national business community and by other interested parties.
The NCP gathers information on national experiences with the Guidelines, handles enquiries, discusses matters related to the guidelines and assists the solving of problems that may rise in this interconnection. The NCP report yearly to the OECD Committee on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises (CIME).

Information

Source

www.oecd.org/daf/investment/guidelines

Remarks

Specificity

Although many business codes of conduct are now publicly available, the Guidelines are the only multilaterally endorsed and comprehensive code that governments are committed to promoting. The Guidelines' recommendations express the shared values of governments of countries that are the source of most of the world's direct investment flows and home to most multinational enterprises. They aim to promote the positive contributions multinationals can make to economic, environmental and social progress.

Nature of the instrument - code of conduct

Purpose - Declaration